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The mind wanderings of me

Lazy, Lazy Sunday

I have never felt so free. My boyfriend told me so many wonderful things yesterday. 1. If I ever decide to have kids (I don’t willingly subject myself to torture), then he would try to produce them haha. 2. If I ever want to get married (sans the brouhaha, I don’t like that institution), he would marry me. 3. We will live together the next time either one of our living arrangements end. I feel like I could never not be happy with this boy.

Monday May 24, 2010

Today we learned new things for about six hours. The morning consisted of a drivers ed course. (More like a sit around and do nothing session). Then we learned how to properly secure a load, change a tire, and do a vehicle check. After lunch, while the of-age ppl drove, we serviced the cross-cut saws. After that, it was pretty much all free time until Raven’s evening session- Your conservation food dollar. She emphasized buying local and not shopping by price because price does not reflect quality. Because of the overproduction of corn, it is being put in all of our foods, esp processed ones. Back in the ’20s or something, 25% of our budget went towards food. Now it’s at 15% and decreasing every yr. This could explain (partially) America’s health problems…Also because of the overproduction of corn, we are feeding it to our stock animals. Cows naturally eat grass, not corn! This changes them irreparably. After a certain time, their stomachs even explode because of it so they have to be killed sooner. Also with all of the fertilizers and chemicals we put in the soils to grow our crops and the high winds in the central U.S., those soils are flowing down our rivers and into the Gulf of Mexico creating a dead zone in the Gulf. Petrochemicals rob the soil of nutrients; the beautiful apple you see at the store is not necessarily the most nutritious-looks are deceiving. Shipping costs are not reflected in the food price. Those bananas from Venezuela may be cheaper, but it took a lot more energy for them to get here than locally grown food. You are paying for nutritional value, so the cheaper it is, generally the less nutritious it is. Buy at farmers markets! It supports farmers, the community, the earth and yourself. Hydrogenated oils and high-fructose corn syrup has free radicals which has shown to lead to cancer. False organic-USDA lowered their organic standards so that all the big corporations could fit under them. “Free-range” chicken, according to USDA organic standards, is a chicken that lives in a cage with thousands of other chickens until slaughter, and the last few wks of its life, a door in the cage is opened so the chicken has the opportunity to go outside. The chicken may or may not take this opportunity. Monsanto funded a huge campaign in the ’90s to get everybody to eat soy. Only eat real organic, non-genetically modified soy. Healthy cow milk is definitely better than soy milk. Natural foods are easier to recognize by the body. The body cannot recognize the “fortification” in cold cereals for example. It’s not in its natural form. Food in its simplest form is generally better for you. Good resources for this subject-Weston A. Price Foundation with Sally Fallon as head. Anna Colbin’s (?) research and Book of Whole Foods. Molly Catsin’s (?) book- the old version without low-fat. (Eat the best fat!)